How Common Are Meteor Strikes?

A meteorite fall to Earth in Russia this morning — and the fall-out, including 500 causalities, is pretty bad. But you might not realise that giant space rocks crash into Earth all the time.

Speaking to AP, Addi Bischoff, a mineralogist at the University of Muenster in Germany, explained that there are typically five to ten meteorite strikes around Earth per year. And even ones as big as the one which just shook Russia enter our atmosphere once every five years.

The reason they go unreported? Well, there's a lot of empty space around the planet: oceans, ice caps, deserts and more, where there's just nobody there to see 'em fall. Russia was just very, very unlucky. [AP]